Impact of Agribusiness Empowerment Interventions on Skills Development and Livelihood Outcomes: Evidence From the Enable Programme in Africa

Abstract

Agribusiness empowerment programmes have become a common strategy to promote youth agripreneurship, help young people develop relevant skills, improve the performance of youth-led agribusiness enterprises, and invariably reduce youth unemployment in Africa. The relevance of these programmes is reflected in many employment frameworks of African government and development partners towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 on decent work and economic growth and SDG 2 on zero hunger through increased youth engagement in the agricultural sector. However, while the rapid evolution and importance of these programmes to host countries are documented, their impacts on both livelihood and economic outcomes remain poorly understood both at national and regional levels. Without sufficient empirical evidence, policymakers and development partners involved in programme implementation may be caught between making informed decisions about scaling programmes or truncating them altogether. This study investigates the factors that drive youth participation in agribusiness empowerment interventions and evaluates programme’s impact on their agripreneurship skills, job creation capacity, and livelihood outcomes taking evidence from the youth component of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Technologies of African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), Empowering Novel Agribusiness-Led Employment (ENABLE) programme conducted in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. A multistage sampling technique was used in obtaining primary agribusiness-level data from a sample of 1435 young agripreneurs, comprising 737 participants and 698 non-participants across the study countries. Descriptive statistics disaggregated by treatment status were generated to assess the food security status of the respondents, the differences in key covariates, and the estimated impact of programme participation. A logistic regression model was used to assess the factors influencing food security and programme participation; an Endogenous Treatment Effect Regression (ETER) model was used to assess the programme's impact on livelihood outcomes; and an Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model was used to estimate the impact on agripreneurship skills and job creation capacity. The results indicate low dietary diversity across the three countries. Also, the majority of the respondents had unacceptable food consumption scores, suggesting that despite being food producers, some young agripreneurs are still food insecure. Food security was positively correlated with access to extension services, participation in the ENABLE-TAAT programme, and access to market information but, negatively with access to credit, number of employees, Covid-19 pandemic, and location. Age, years of formal education, marital status, household size, the value of durable assets, agripreneurship experience, business level, credit access, and training perceptions were significantly correlated with programme participation. Even though both participants and non-participants had relatively high agripreneurship skills scores, participants had higher scores than non-participants across the three countries. The impact estimates from the switching regression model also show that participation had significant and positive impacts on agripreneurship skills, job creation capacity, income, and food security. Similar results were obtained across the three countries for agripreneurship skills and job creation capacity. However, no significant impact was found for income and food security in Kenya and Nigeria, respectively which was attributed to specific contextual factors. These results suggest the need for more investment in policy interventions or programmes focusing on youth agribusiness empowerment, particularly those that target young actors along different agricultural value chains. It also suggests interventions geared towards mitigating constraints to credit access by young agripreneurs to ease barriers to working capital and business

innovation. Furthermore, the study recommends strategies to improve youth perception and raise awareness of programmes to increase participation.